Video game 'Minecraft' finds a home in schools

Students build digital worlds to learn about everything from history to science

April 28, 2014|By John Keilman, Tribune reporter

Bobby Craig, left, and Doogy Lee work on their "Minecraft" projects at Quest Academy, a private school in Palatine. (Chuck Berman, Chicago Tribune)

Seventh-graders at Northbrook's Maple School had just started learning about the Cold War when a handful of boys sat down at the school's library computers to cement their understanding of the subject.

They weren't scouring Wikipedia for historical information or reviewing old news footage on YouTube. They were building a model of divided Germany with the help of one of the world's hottest video games: "Minecraft."

"It's really a great visual tool for presenting our knowledge, just like you would use something like PowerPoint to show off your research," said Arie Estrin, 12, who was assembling a nuclear submarine, block by digital block. "That's what we do with 'Minecraft.' It's a good way to channel your thoughts into understanding how something might have actually looked or happened."

A game like "Minecraft" might seem better suited for the rec room than the classroom, but more and more teachers are tapping its creative power to educate students in everything from history to engineering to biology.

It's part of a movement that aims to motivate kids through familiar and beloved technology. Teachers are using games such as "Assassin's Creed" to illustrate the Revolutionary War and "World of Warcraft" to inspire creative writing exercises, but nothing has had the impact of "Minecraft," which has more than 100 million registered users worldwide.

"It's virtual Legos," said Zack Gilbert, a sixth-grade teacher in Normal, Ill., who hosts a podcast on gaming in education. "When parents are like, 'I don't know (about the merit of using video games in class),' I say, 'Did you play Legos as a kid?'

"That's what this is, except it's virtual and there's more building and creating than you could ever do (in the real world)."

"Minecraft" was the brainchild of Markus Persson, a Swedish game designer enchanted by the relatively simple graphics and open-ended play of the games he encountered in his youth. Released in 2009, "Minecraft" lets users build almost anything they can imagine out of multicolored cubes.

The results are frequently stunning. YouTube is teeming with guided tours of highly detailed "Minecraft" worlds, ranging from university libraries and New York City skyscrapers to the fantasy lands of "Game of Thrones" and "Harry Potter."

Northwestern University student Ben Rothman spent hundreds of hours rendering the school's campus on "Minecraft" two years ago, then ran his creation through a 3-D printer. The resulting model, roughly 5 feet by 4 feet, was put on display in the lobby of the university's Technological Institute.

"The main driving force was that I noticed that I had been spending 20 hours a week playing video games," said Rothman, 22. "I figured, 'I'm going to do this anyway. Why don't I do something that will let me play but also get something out of it?'"

That's a pretty good summation of the recipe that has helped "Minecraft" catch on at hundreds of schools worldwide. Joel Levin, a former teacher who helped create a version of the game for educators, said his young daughter picked up sophisticated math skills such as estimation and proportion merely by building a "Minecraft" house.

"'Minecraft' is offering teachers a new type of learning experience, but the secret sauce is that kids are engaged," said Levin, whose company, TeacherGaming, has sold the "MinecraftEdu" version of the game to 2,500 schools worldwide. "They love it. They want to do it."

Some kids want to do it so much that they sign up for weekend or summer classes that use "Minecraft" as a teaching tool. Dana Stewart, who teaches a course for Northwestern's Center for Talent Development, has her students build ancient Egyptian structures with the game, a lesson that requires them to contemplate design issues and available building materials.

"It's an experience you can't replicate any other way," Stewart said. "It's kind of, sort of, like walking through it in real life."

Jana Sebestik, who works at the University of Illinois' Office for Mathematics, Science, and Technology Education, teaches contemporary lessons with the game. She had university students build a nuclear plant and windmill farm in a "Minecraft" world, then asked middle schoolers in Urbana to construct houses that share the same virtual power grid.

The idea is to use a game that kids love to introduce them to real-world science and engineering problems and to kindle an interest in the subjects, which Sebestik hopes will last to high school and beyond.

"Middle school is the place you can catch a kid and create enthusiasm," she said. "By the time a kid is in high school, they've already crossed things off their list."